Piper's lament at the gates of Glamis

Perhaps it should not have been surprising that a young boy who had never met the woman born Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon should have got up early on his school holidays to travel to her ancestral home to play a piper's lament in her honour.

Still, Colin Jamieson's simple courtesy did seem like an unusual act for an 11-year-old child of the Nintendo age. "I thought she looked fun," said Colin. "She looked nice so I wanted to come to Glamis and play the pipes here for her."

The gates to the old castle, however, were shut. An estate worker sat outside telling the handful of tourists and mourners who drew up yesterday that Glamis Castle, where the Queen Mother grew up, was closed as a mark of respect.

Undeterred but a little disappointed, Colin moved to the steps of the tiny village's cenotaph. On a hazy spring morning, the haunting notes of The Dark Isle carried out over the village roof tops before they were lost to the rolling farmland beyond.

"Colin wanted to come, it was his idea - we are not really monarchists," said his aunt, Anita Jamieson. "I think it's good, though, that he has some respect for our history. People say the monarchy should modernise, but all that pomp, which the Queen Mother was so much a part of, is the bit I like."

As the Queen Mother's funeral was broadcast to the nation yesterday, the handful of streets which make up the Angus village of her childhood were all but deserted. The only sign of activity was from AD Warren, the local coalman.

"I am not that fond of the royal family," he said. "It's sad that the woman is dead, but she had a great run. She didn't have a hard life though, did she? If I get to 71 after carrying this coal all my days, I'll be glad."

The Queen Mother spent some of her happiest times in Glamis. It was not only where she learned to fish and dance, but also the place where she tended wounded soldiers during the first world war as her family home doubled as a hospital.

She is held with affection still in the village. But, for some, her passing may come to mark the end of a certain British attitude towards the monarchy.

"People had respect for the Queen Mother, but they don't seem to have that kind of respect for the royal family now, with all that's happened over the last few years," said Gordon Lyon, the postmaster.

In a nearby side street, Jane Gray is gathering up garden rubbish. "I don't suppose her age really matters to her family, they have still lost her," she said.

"I don't know about what people say she was like in private. There's not many round here that would remember her, but she looked nice on the television."

Away from the rural Scotland the Queen Mother knew, in the urban centres of the country, feelings about her death were similarly mixed.

"I don't see why we have to have all this fuss inflicted upon us," said Gerry Devine, in Glasgow's George Square. "I wouldn't go to the funeral of someone who I neither knew or cared about, and I don't damn well see why it has to be on every television channel and radio station."

Aileen McKay had also chosen not to watch the ceremony. "It's sad for them losing their grandmother, but watching it is not really for me," she said. "The spectacle of it is interesting, I suppose, but I can't say it really moves me. I've got other things on my mind today."